This invention relates in general to speech actuation and control and more specifically to virtual control of electronic devices using speech.
The development of dynamic, short range device-to-device communications technologies such as Bluetooth and HomeRF have made it attractive to construct personal communications systems that consist of a collection of specialized devices that collaborate to provide a custom suite of services to the user. For example, such a system could consist of a cell phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), digital camera, and/or print printer that permit a device to seamlessly connect with other electronic devices through a radio frequency (RF) link.
In such a system it would be useful if the devices could be controlled by speech where a user could speak one or more commands without the need to use touch screen or mechanical switches. This would enable the user to control a device in a hands free manner. An example might be adjusting various parameters of a digital camera while holding it to shoot a picture or speaking the email address of a recipient while using a two-way pager. While these devices could all eventually contain a Bluetooth transceiver or the functional equivalent, most of them will not be able to afford the overhead of a continuous speech recognizer and speech synthesizer. The software and hardware complement to accomplish such a task would require additional space for additional code not to mention the additional current drain that would be placed on the device due to the increased microprocessor requirements.
Thus the need exits for a mechanism to control devices by speech without requiring them to have integrated speech recognition and/or speech synthesis capabilities.